Abstract
Contemporary education is characterised by a global testing culture, reflecting the fact that students’ learning outcomes and standards are the focus of policymakers worldwide. It therefore plays a significant role in educational policies in different national contexts. We offer a brief outline of the precursors and preconditions that have facilitated the rise of today’s global testing culture. The article notes two chronological stages: the first encompasses a confluence of comparative education, the rise of applied psychology, and the formation of transnational organisational structures prior to World War II. The second stage features the emergence of international organisations immediately after World War II. We argue that these developments subsequently conflated into a trajectory fostered by Cold War policies and became dominant from the 1990s onwards.
Highlights
Given contemporary education, it is reasonable to speak of a global education space characterised by national education systems permeated by many similar components, such as marketisation, the greater use of tests and statistics, accountability requirements, international comparisons, and the mantra of raising standards (Plum, 2014; Smith, 2016)
As Smith (2016, p. 7) notes, ‘the reinforcing nature of the global testing culture leads to an environment where testing becomes synonymous with accountability which becomes synonymous with education quality’
The global testing culture is closely affiliated with what Pasi Sahlberg has called the Global Education Reform movement (GERM)
Summary
It is reasonable to speak of a global education space characterised by national education systems permeated by many similar components, such as marketisation, the greater use of tests and statistics, accountability requirements, international comparisons, and the mantra of raising standards (Plum, 2014; Smith, 2016). Their article is organised around three influential persons and institutions in the history of education indicator research: Jullien de Paris (1775–1848), Teachers College at Columbia University, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics Using these three focus points, the article finds discursive shifts in the policy usage of educational statistics affiliated with the three historical processes of modernisation/nation building, colonisation/development, and standardisation/globalisation. Our article lies in the wake of Cardoso and Steiner-Khamsi, it offers a slightly different perspective on the necessary conditions – or core building blocks – of the contemporary global testing culture and adds other factors, such as applied psychology and the organisational landscape in the two chronological stages treated here In this regard, Lawn’s 2008 volume concerning the International Examinations Inquiry (IEI) and 2014 followup article are pivotal. This section focuses on the confluence of comparative education, the rise of applied psychology, and the organisational structures that began forming before WWII
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